TELEPHONE EXCHANGE

Evening Star, Issue 18257, 23 April 1923, Page 4

TELEPHONE EXCHANGE

ENORMOUS EXTRA WORK. OPERATORS CARRIED TO AND FRO IN TAXIS. A visit to the Telephone Exchange at 10.30 to-day revealed a state of affairs that would have been maddening to any Ibnt a well-organised and thoroughly efficient staff. Tho officer in charge was loud in his praise of the way the operators and mechanicians had stoad up to their greatly-increased duties. From 3 p.m. yesterday the business made a tremendous jump, and operators ha,a to he brought in to tho office by taxis. Between 5 and 6 p.m. the call load was nearly as great as an average load for a whole day, and a strong staff on' continuously till a late hour. Everybody seemed to want to call everybody else. Evidently the town was in a fright.

At daylight this morning extra operator* were called on and convoyed from their homes by taxis, and when a ‘ Star ’ reporter entered the operating room he saw a unique sight. There are twentyseven positions at the switchboard, each position serving 150 subscribers, and on every board there were many numbers that had to remain unanswered. Seventeen of those hold-over calls wore counted on one of the twenty-seven boards, and the others were in corresponding plight. This must serve as ample explanation to the public in regard to the telephone delays. About 400 subscribers in Caversham and St. Kihla were quite cut off owing to water having reached some of the underground cables, and Ravcnsbourne subscribers suffered to some extent from a similar cause, HARBOR WORKS NOT MUCH DAMAGED. Mr IT. C. Campbell (chairman of the Otago Harbor Board), Mr Wilkie (engineer), and all the members of the board’s engineering staff were out yesterday afternoon and evening watching and retrieving. The principal work to their hand was to take people out of homes near the Leith and find them sate places of refuge. The actual damage to the board’s works is comparatively slight. The reclamation stood firmly, and the other works did not suffer much. A certain amount of timber, boxing, etc., was washed away, but not to anything like the extent that might have been in such a terrifying flood. If the railway bridge had not been raised it would have been carried away to a certainty.